Clinophilia
by NinnyTreetops
Summary: (n.) - excessive desire to stay in bed Missing moment from the sexy discretion shot in E16.


I'd recommend you read mswyrr's fic "While Spring is in the World" before this if you haven't, yet.  
For one, because that's just a good life choice to make.  
Secondly, because this fic just takes that headcanon pass and runs on with it.

**_Clinophilia (n.) - excessive desire to stay in bed _**

_One:  
__I am healthy  
Two:  
Bare feet. I've always been partial to bare feet... bad things hardly happen when I'm bare footed - except that time I stepped on a scorpion fish by the sea, which can ONLY happen when you're barefoot, so maybe I should rework that theory. But bare feet: bare feet are essentially good. Maybe I can uphold it with a sub-clause of bare feet being EXCEPTIONAL when they are hers sandwiched up with mine? Yes. Good sub-clause.  
__Three:  
__Couch things. Lots of couch things. I could itemize the couch things, but wouldn't that be cheating? But then again it feels disrespectful to not give her hum its own point. Okay, so here it is, then:  
__Four:  
__Hum; Ahjumma's. Always good, no sub-clauses needed.  
__Five:  
__Her hand on my belly under my tshirt. Right now. Part thereof: the tiny disgruntled sleep noise she made when I got up earlier, which segues us into  
__Six:  
__the daisy string of tiny pleased sleep noises she made when she snuggled into my back when I got back into bed earlier. HAH! I'm going to zip right through to 26 before breakfast. SO winning this today."_

* * *

When Enrique turned seven, his mum gave him optimism for his birthday. After the customary wake-up hug-and-tickle, he'd sat in bed having his obligatory birthday boy chocolate milk whilst she'd perched on the edge of his mattress.

"Que-geum," she'd said. "New year, new game: before you get up, I want you to think of six things to be happy about."  
His nose had wrinkled. "But how's that a game? How do I beat it?"  
Finger against her chin, his mother had contemplated. "How about by making sure you have a seventh thing by bedtime tonight? Seven years, seven reasons to be happy," she'd leveled at him conspiratorially.  
He'd gulped down the second half of his glass and nodded. "Okay, that isn't hard. What about tomorrow?".  
"You start over. That's when it starts getting hard. Maybe."

She'd taken his empty glass and kissed the top of his head. "Get up. Wash up. An army of fairies has dropped a horrendous amount of presents in the kitchen for a certain someone... Slowly!" Eyes rolling, she'd un-tucked the straightjacket her son had fashioned from his pyjama in his haste to get to the bathroom.

At fifteen, he'd come home with a stormy countenance and split lip.  
"What are the numbers, button?" she'd asked once she'd managed to coax him into the kitchen and forced an ice pack into his hand.  
"I don't wanna play."  
"Come on, you'll feel better."  
"Maldita sea... okay, let's see... 0.5"  
"Que-geum..."  
"No, seriously," he'd stood up to chuck the ice pack into the sink. "trust me on this one. Everything is shit right now, and I spent half of last night barfing around in migraine mode and what felt like half of this one having my ass kicked, so health doesn't get a full score, either. 0.5. And I don't want to fucking talk about it."  
"Enrique!"  
"You know, optimism is a pretty shit gift to give somebody," he'd said dejectedly before slinking through the door.

At twentysix, he was on the phone with her trying to make a cup of tea without the benefit of a second hand. In the end, he just stood behind Tae Joon's kitchen counter staring dumbly at the tea tin.  
"Have you had porridge yet? You should have some porridge," she fuzzed.  
"Oumma, it's after two in the morning, here. I am tired. I am not making porridge now. Besides, I've eaten."  
"I don't want to hang up, yet."  
"The boy says he's fine!", his father grumbled in the background.  
"Well, your son always says he's fine. Remember when he broke his ribs at football? Right as rain. When he fainted from exhaustion and dehydration at that stupid programming... marathon... thing? Oh, he was SO fine when I spoke to him hours before."  
"I was great, actually. My coding was on fire. And the word you're looking for is hackathon. Hackathon."  
"Don't interrupt me, young man! And you…!"  
With his mother ranting off at his father, he ambled over to the window, bandaged hand dangling pointlessly. There was a gap in Dok Mi's curtains through which he could see the glow of her desk lamp.  
"Alright, then. Give me the numbers and I'll shush."  
"Huh?" His eyes were fixed to the shaft of light.  
"The numbers, button. Give me the numbers."  
It went out. He smiled, his forehead rested against the window pane.  
_She came to the hospital. _  
_She propped her door open for me. _  
_Dinner. _  
_The smell of pencil shavings. _  
_Unprecedented frequencies of tiny smiles. _  
_Definitely, definitely leaned into me when I hugged her. At the end. _  
_Only heard her door fall into its lock once I was down the first flight of stairs._  
_She liked me._  
_She likes me._  
"Nineteen," he said.  
"Nineteen? You got pushed into traffic this morning and you mean to tell me you've made it to nineteen? You're too good, my idiot son."

* * *

This had not been the plan. There hadn't been a plan, other than making a plan later. He hadn't thought they needed a plan. He hadn't planned on anything.  
There had been a campfire (love a good camp fire), then couch things, and then brief sleep, interrupted when he'd woken up in the middle of the night disoriented, thinking himself in an airport hotel before his ears sifted through the whisper of the sea outside for her breathing. Then there had been the gazing which, okay, very likely woke her up, regardless of the fact that he'd quickly flopped onto his back as soon as she stirred.

She'd looked over at him for a long moment before clapping her eyes upwards to meet his on the ceiling.  
Napes prickling, they had lain next to each other in the dark, drawing closer to each other without moving a muscle, until he got caught in the undertow of her breath.  
"Dok Mi?"  
Her arm had unfolded to rest next to his, raising the hair on the back of it.  
"Yes?"  
"Ca… may I kiss you?"  
He hadn't said "Again. More. Over and over."  
Her still form grew heavier. Straining for an answer, he had reached breaking point. "Or you could kiss me. If you want."  
His chest was brimming.  
The duvet had crunched like dry snow. Her lips had settled on him, barely at first.  
Then over and over and all over.  
Surface tension broken, they had flowed into each other.

Around dawn, when he'd roused her despite applying his best cat burglar moves to extract himself from the bed like a soft summer breeze, he'd found out that she sleeps not exactly like a log – more like a sluggish, stagnant body of quicksand. A wilful, grumpy body of quicksand.  
Frowning, she'd rolled into the warm spot he'd just vacated on the mattress, a negatory rumble at the back of her throat, one arm reaching.  
"Bathroom," he'd quietly replied.  
The half of her face that had reluctantly parted company with the pillow spoke of both betrayal and confusion through one squinting eye.  
"Because _bathroom_," he'd grinned.  
His thumb smoothed over her creased brow before he gingerly removed the arm that had slung itself around his midriff. "Be right back."  
She'd made a noncommittal sound that he'd decided to take as "okay".  
Upon his return, her bleary body had pulled him in, bed warm and stubborn with sleep, until her slow breath rolled across his nape.  
Definitely quicksand, he'd thought before dozing off again.

He'd been awake forever. Ish. His phone was in the pocket of his jacket in the next room, and his watch was on an arm wrapped around hers, wrapped around them, duvet wrapped around it all – a circumstance he had no intentions of disturbing.  
The light outside was milky, and the lapping shore overwhelmed by the white noise of rain.

_Seventeen:_  
_Not jealous of the sea anymore, which is good because I'm not sure there would have been a way for me to justify that any longer._

The rhythm of her breath against his back shifted. Her arm tightened around his middle and then, with the second deep inhale, stiffened.  
He caught her withdrawing handand brought it up to press his lips against its heel.

"Sleep well?" He hazarded. She nodded against his nape. "Good," he said, lowering her hand to his chest, where it took purchase over his collarbone. "Me, too. Hungry?"  
"Not really," she said, her thick voice muffled between his shoulder blades.  
"I could probably knock together some waffles. Or pancakes, at least?"  
Her chin slumped over his shoulder. "'n't you dare go anywhere," she said slowly, before timidly nestling up against him "Unless of course _you're_ hungry."  
"Eh," he shrugged. "priorities."  
The sensation of her smile against the crook of his neck went straight into the patronus bank.  
"So: bed?" he asked.  
"For now."  
"Perfect."

He wrapped his hand around hers and curled a little more tightly into her. Her free hand had started combing through his hair, fingernails drawing spirograph loops into his scalp. And then they stopped. And then, to his great dismay, she withdrew her face from the crook of his neck.

"What's that?" she asked, her thumb rubbing just behind his hairline.  
"What's wha... whoa, hey!"  
She'd sat up on her elbow to get a better look – which was most reprehensible because it created space between them. "This scar. Behind your temple."  
He rolled towards her onto his back in hopes of relieving the space issue.  
"Oooh, that. That's ancient. Don't even see it anymore." His arms flapped, simultaneously transmitting dismissal of the conversation and invitation to return to our previous programme. Which wasn't going to happen anytime soon if the displeased tilt of her brow was anything to go by. "It's not a big deal," he insisted.  
"It's a head scar as long as my thumb. It so is."  
"You're not going to like the story." he complained.  
"That's exactly why I want to hear it."  
"Only if you lie back down," he said.  
"That's coercion," she deadpanned. Enrique only shot insistent glances at the arm he'd plopped down across her pillow. She rolled her eyes and leaned back.  
"That's a pretty cool cardigan you're wearing, by the way." He snigged on the surplus blue material bunched up around her shoulder.  
Dok Mi cleared her throat. "It was the first thing I came across."  
"Because I chivalrously placed my clothes on the floor rather than yonder far too distant rack. You're welcome."  
She snorted. "'Yonder'?"  
"Being chivalrous," he explained.  
Another snort while she tried to find last night's spot against his side, like a driving student trying to rediscover the reverse gear.  
"Nice and cozy?" he asked once she'd settled down, playing with a strand of hair behind her ear.  
She nodded. "Perfect listening conditions."  
"Yeah, alright!" he moaned. "It was a stone. In a snowball. During recess. First winter in Spain."

And up came her head again, scowling deeply. "That's horrible."  
He shrugged. "I dunno. There's a fair bit of comedy there. In hindsight."  
Still scowling, she nestled back down, head on his arm, fingers stroking the scar erratically. He continued:

"Dropped me like a rock, if you forgive the pun," he quipped. "Laceration needed nine stitches. According to Seo Young scared everybody shitless as I just lay there bleeding into the snowy school yard. It took her 20 minutes to get a teacher to come as she wasn't talking - I like to imagine a scenario like on Lassie – and the other kids thought I was dead because blood on snow makes IMPRESSIVE pools. Didn't help that Alvaro - right I haven't told you about Alvaro. Top guy. Best friend. Flatmate - anyways, Alvaro had propped my legs up in shock position which of course isn't the best idea when there's a slip of a boy bleeding, uh, _profusely_ from the head, not that a 9 year-old would know that from being an Emergency Room fanboy. But that's how we met, him keeping my legs on his shoulders while I drenched into the wintry scenery. Well, I mean, I wasn't there for any of it. But I certainly did notice the chunky kid crying to my Mother how he only meant to help me when I came to in the hospital. Apparently the doctors painted him a shocking scenario of everything he'd done wrong. They kept me overnight and everything. They also told my mother to feed me lots of iron, and she went a bit overboard, which is why to this date, I intimately know and hate every way to prepare beetroot. The end," he concluded.

He could feel her thinking in the ensuing silence.  
"I'm sorry," she said eventually. He let it slide because her thumb was still absently rubbing over the slight ridge, and, really, you gotta pick your battles.  
He glanced at her. There was a promise of thunderclouds curving just beyond the horizon of her eyes, her protectiveness a distant rumble. He liked it. A lot. "Don't be," he shrugged.  
She craned her neck to press a kiss against the streak.  
"On second thought," he flustered, "I think it just became my favourite thing about myself. I might start parting my hair there."  
Her head lingered on his shoulder.  
"Occasionally, very rarely, just for future reference: I _want_ to be sorry, okay?" she said.  
He nodded. "Y'know… Alvaro and I orchestrated a very thorough investigation into who could've done it. I'm sure I could draw up a list of our prime suspects, in case you wanted to go all Lady Snowblood on them. I won't stop you. But right now," he continued, "I think it's twinged a little bit just now. Very concerning. Do you think you could do that again to make it better?"  
He had nudged his temple her way and was now twisting onto his side to face her, confirming a suspicion he'd been testing for a bit now: that up close was definitely, definitely his favourite way to look at her. His face set in a smile that stretched from the pit of his stomach to the birthmark just under her brow.

"What are you grinning about?" she asked,  
"Nothing," he replied. "Everything. You, mostly. Obviously. Extremely obviously. What are you staring at, though?"  
Her feet made covert contact with his. "Likewise."  
There was a pillow crease vanishing into her worry wrinkle.  
"I was also thinking how I think I like "good night" better than "goodbye"," he carried Mi smiled. "Me, too. What about "good morning"?"  
"I can't pit anything against "good morning", Ahjumma. "Good morning", right now, is its own category."The corners of her mouth twitched at the nickname. "Well: Good Morning," she said, fingers of one hand trickling against his sighed. "Hmm. I'd like to order a lifetime supply of "Good Morning"," he said languidly"Come here. Please." she added sheepishly."I _am_ here," he stage-whispered.  
"More here."  
He slid his bottom arm underneath her waist until they were flush against each other.  
"Okay?"  
"Yes. Well done." Her eyes flicked over his face several times.  
She hesitantly traced the line of his jaw. "Okay?"  
"Outstanding,' he replied.  
"I have no idea what I'm doing," she blurted.  
"Likewise. Best stop thinking about it and go on, using the buddy system."  
Her ring finger came to rest in the hollow just beneath his bottom lip.

_twenty... something._

"Quid pro quo," he said, to keep the atmosphere idle with the requisite chit-chat. "Is there a story to your rings?"

She blinked and her eyes flitted down to her hand.  
"They were my mother's," she said, withdrawing it from his face.  
Enrique loosened his grip, but held her gaze.  
"A gift?"  
Her smile sent a cold trickle through his chest.  
"No. Leftovers. Or maybe relics..."  
He waited quietly to see whether she'd continue.  
"One afternoon - _the_ afternoon," she started, worry wrinkle pushing down on her eyebrow. "when she dropped me off at Grandmother's. It wasn't a surprise, not really. My, uhm, overnight knapsack; It had started going back empty months ago. I noticed because father's suitcases had done the same as the frequency of his business trips increased. He bled out of the house in increments.  
That day, I had to shift the knapsack on the backseat next to me, to make room for my school bag, and it was heavy, so heavy she had to carry it from the car to grandmother's house for me. I unpacked it in my room; grandmother was shouting at my mother through the bathroom door, and then mother left, with the water still running. Zipped right past my door. I focussed on the rushing to not hear her stomp down the gravel to our, uhm her car; didn't work. The knapsack was full of my books. Not my favourites just... random handfuls. I went to shut off the water. Grandmother was downstairs slamming pots and bowls around.  
They were lying in the soap dish.  
They're not much. They can't have been..." she cleared her throat, closed her eyes around the word "_precious_ to her, or she wouldn't have left them behind."  
He laid his forehead against hers. His free hand was absently rotating the ring on her index finger.  
"However, she wore them all through that fall. I don't remember the last time she touched me when it wasn't perfunctory, but I remember the small clinking sounds they made against the glass top of the dining table.  
I always thought I'd outgrow them eventually."  
Her voice had gone so quiet, the statement didn't make it very far. It simply hovered in the spaces between their twined hands  
With a twist, he nudged the ring between his fingers upwards and ran his thumb along the groove it had worn into her index finger.  
"Looks to me like you have."  
"I'm not sure that counts when I still wear them," Dok Mi frowned.  
"Hm." He kissed the knuckle just below the depression. "But that's your choice. Not hers. Totally counts," he said, slipping the ring back into place.

"Hey," he nudged her shin with his. She looked up. "The way I try to see it, scars are a reminder that you were stronger than whatever it was that did that to you."  
"Some things we wind up doing to ourselves."  
He reset his jaw.  
"Well, yeah: the selves are the trickiest opponent. They know all the dirty tricks," he said, matter-of-fact. "Not that all scars are necessarily bad, mind. For instance, there's one right above my knee that's from when my and Alvaro's family rented out a place up the costa brava for the summer - it's beautiful there, I need to take you there, in September, when the tourists are gone but it's still warm. Very beach. Anyway, we were playing on the beach and in coves all day, spelunking over jagged rocks, tiny, tiny Que-germ getting toasted like a strip of bacon under the July sun. I even got some light streaks in my hair from it. Couldn't pay a stylist enough for that kind of wholesome healthy euro look. Anyways: At one point, something Alvaro said made me laugh so hard, I lost my balance and tumbled over, tearing open my leg on a rock in the process."  
"What was it he said?"  
"That's the kicker: I don't remember. But I do remember that I was so giggly I didn.t even mind the gash. In fact," he chuckled, "we tried making good use of it by taking a dip to see whether we might lure any sharks our way. Didn't work."  
"Sooo, maybe scars just draw attention to important bits. Like notes from the editor in the margins."  
"Ah. I see what you did there," she said shrewdly.  
"See? I pay attention."  
"There's a burn mark on my elbow from when my grandmother tried to teach me how to make a beef heart casserole."  
Que-Geum pulled a national park of a face "Please tell me she failed."  
"Are you freely insulting treasured family recipes right now?"  
"Never. Maybe."  
"It's a very nutritious dish. Anyway, I burned myself on the the side of the oven because I was so disgusted with it that I was holding it as far away from me as I could, and my arms wobbled."  
"AHA!" he exclaimed.  
"I was nine! You don't have an adult palette when you're nine!"  
"Sure. Sure. Fun fact," he interjected, closing her fist in his. "your heart is about the size of your balled up fist. On average."  
"Doesn't seem like enough living space," she mused.  
Enrique shrugged. "It's all about interior design. You'd be surprised what a couple of black-out curtains can do to a place."

"You are impossible," she said, stern veneer cracking over quirking lips.  
Tugging his shirt, Dok Mi rolled onto her back. He was pretty sure he managed to overtake himself on an astral plane or three in his eagerness to follow.  
"Impossibly charming. I think I've got my foot in the door," he grinned, fumbling with just where to sort his legs as he above her.  
"Not done with the pun, are we?" she asked. One ambivalent hand relinquished its grip on his shirt to wander elsewhere.  
"You're the one who _opened the door to it,_" he snickered. His eyes flicked down to the corner of her jaw. It being the moment for impulses, he allowed himself to follow his by pressing his lips to the spot. Which made it easier to convince himself her groan was a reaction to his actions, not his words.  
"Much worse. You've made yourself comfortable. There's food crumbs in the right atrium."  
He drew back to look at her, all mock solemnity. "I do that, don't I? Gotta work on that."  
She continued: "and tiny paint splatters all over the ventricles. You only see them when you know they're there. I know. And now you do, too."  
"I love you, too," he replied.

The sentiment was still too fresh to co-exist with other states of being. All playfulness drained from the room to make space for a familiar shade of nausea; lodged in the chest instead of the stomach. And warm.  
He'd been struggling to put a name to that feeling since the night after his accident.  
Her voice stirred into the warmth.  
"I love you."  
Ah.  
Reverence.  
Her fingertips brushed against his cheek bones, haltingly guiding him.

She kissed him like she was circling a paragraph; Good. Retain. Elaborate.

He slid his arms underneath them, hands trailing up her spine to scoop her shoulder blades.  
Hers were dipping under the trim of his shirt. Three cheers for the buddy system.  
If this was what came with staying in, then he was going to set up a two-week online food delivery plan first chance.  
A lifetime supply of cake mix. A blizzard of rice. A landslide of potted scallions.  
Kissing her had nothing of the smooth grace of perfect execution. It was an obstacle race around inevitable smiles. Two grins bumping into each other. A bonding target conflict.  
Thin lips dragging against one another, erratic puffs of breath tugging to and fro, messy heartbeats tumbling together.  
Smooth had nothing on bumpy. The bumps were where they fit together.

A brush of her fingernails high on his side made him jump, helplessly twitching away from her hand on his ticklish spot.  
"Sorry," he huffed into her hair.  
"Don't say that," she admonished, fingers resolutely back on track.  
He twisted sideways "Ahjumma, are doing this on purp… YOU ARE!" his voice jumped involuntarily as she danced across the spot. "STOP IT!" he yipped indignantly.  
So she did. Eyes twinkling, she laid her warm palm flat over the spot, instead.  
Six weeks. Six weeks ago had been the first time he'd made her smile, in that seaside shop.  
"Que-geum?"  
"Hm?"  
"You're doing it again," she smiled.  
"Doing what?"  
"Staring. Grinning."  
"Well you'd better get used to it because this is how I plan to pay for that life time supply of good mornings," he asked, squirming just a bit as her palm shifted as much in retort.  
"This is an unhealthy imbalance of power. You have to tell me about your ticklish spots. Right now."  
"Oh, you wish," Dok Mi said.  
He shrugged. "Okay. Fine-toothed search party, it is."  
He started kissing a trail along her brow to her temple, catching her eye for permission before jumping from jaw to throat. She granted it with a hand in his nape.

"I'm going for a three pecks per inch kind of resolution," he mumbled against the curve of her clavicle. The tension between the light rasp of his teeth and the hum of his voice against her skin brought forth an involuntary, tiny yelp from Dok Mi. Enrique's head popped up, an equally delighted grin on his face. "That was a good noise, so we're definitely gonna do _that_ again, right?"  
Dok Mi cleared her throat against her blush.  
"Yes," she mumbled, with a small but resolute nod.  
"Excellent. On it." He contemplated the base of her neck with intense concentration, mouth twisted up in a focussed pinch, for a long moment before sighing in a world-weary way.  
"You've made me loose my spot!" he complained, and shimmied back up towards her with considerably more wriggling than ten or so inches of travel distance would really justify. "Now I have to start all over again"  
Her raised eyebrow scoffed at him.  
"Look, I'm sorry, I don't make the rules."  
This broke her thinly veiled derision to make way for an indulgent smile.  
"Yes, you do, in fact," she said.  
"I know, that's why they're so _good_," he mouthed. One last superfluous squirm, and his right hand freed itself from underneath the duvet. His knuckles rubbed faintly against her temple.

He sobered "Alright?"  
His fringe was tickling her nose, and she reached up to smooth it away, hand settling at the side of his face.  
"Never better," she said emphatically. "Alright?"  
A slow smile blossomed underneath his earnest eyes, and he nodded enthusiastically. "Phenomenal," he said.  
"Good. Now, where were you?"


End file.
